Lean Toward Over-Educating

08.25.08

- Andrew Wetzler, President

MoreVisibility participated in a “Business Make Over” program with a major, national newspaper last week. We will provide a link to the article on our website once it’s published.

The gist of the concept is that we provided recommendations to another business for improving the effectiveness of their website, which was facilitated by the newspaper. The idea is loosely adopted from the “Make Over” television shows that have become so popular, but due to the time constraints and format of the publication, it remains the responsibility of the company to actually implement the changes that we recommended.

What struck me during the meeting between the business owner, the reporter and our team was how much “we” take for granted today in terms of the knowledge level of others who aren’t involved with SEO / SEM every day, particularly the jargon that has become “mainstream” by those of us in the industry. The number of business people who are still not conversant in SEO and SEM is noteworthy.

Similarly, I believe we give too much credit to internet users (as opposed to businesses) with respect to their ability to distinguish between paid and organic listing listings. These observations highlight the need for a marketing strategy that encompasses both paid and organic tactics, including social media. Having good organic results is not a reason to dismiss SEM or vice versa.

Although there is no question that both internet users and marketers are far more sophisticated than they were a few years ago, I believe it is dangerous to assume too much relative to anyone’s knowledge, particularly with emerging dimensions of the internet, like Social Media.

Blogs, Facebook, YouTube, etc. are still incredibly foreign to many companies and individuals, yet they have brought a new dimension to the web and infused it with a second wind. That is largely a function of their reliance on user generated content. Their future potential is as rich as any aspect of the internet.

If you are a marketer, figure out a way to utilize these tools. If you are an agency, it’s time to educate your clients in much the same way that you had to teach them the fundamentals of Search a few years ago.

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